The Coalition for Diversity, a student group at Boalt Hall School of Law, is drafting a letter to university administration in favor of Christopher Edley, one of four leading candidates for Boalt dean.
The coalition hopes additional student groups will add their names to the letter before it is finalized in the coming days.
The students say Edley has been a champion of civil rights issues and affirmative action programs and also has a strong understanding of fund raising and other issues that will help Boalt.
Edley is the founding co-director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard and is a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He was the director of the White House Review of Affirmative Action under President Bill Clinton, and wrote a book called "Not All Black & White: Affirmative Action, Race and American Values" out of that experience.
Edley's views are in line with the 150-member Coalition for Diversity, which works to increase diversity at Berkeley, said coalition member Yungsuhn Park, who is also vice president of the Boalt Hall Student Association.
Edley and three other men are on the list of candidates to be the next dean at Boalt, replacing John Dwyer, who resigned in November over allegations of sexual misconduct with a student.
The other candidates are Edward Rubin, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a former Boalt professor who served as the school's associate dean from 1989 to 1992; E. Thomas Sullivan, a professor and former dean at the University of Minnesota Law School; and UCLA School of Law professor Stephen Yeazell.
Coalition member Guy Johnson said Edley, who is African American, will also bring some diversity to Boalt's administration.
"If you look at the top levels of administration, not just at Boalt and not just in California law schools, but in higher education generally, there's a dearth of female candidates and candidates of color," Johnson said. "Boalt has a chance to be a leader in this."
Each of the candidates will visit the campus in coming weeks to meet faculty, students and staff. Edley visited Monday and Tuesday, Park said.
An 11-member committee leading the search for a new dean hopes to forward the names of its top selections to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl in the next couple of months.
Robert Berring, Boalt's interim dean, said it's probably not unusual for a student group to lobby for a candidate.
"I wouldn't doubt that in every search in the past, student groups have chosen candidates and have lobbied for them," Berring said. "They're law students. They're active and involved and they want to have a say."
